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Portraits and bullet holes

Sitting next to the port in Lebanon’s second largest city, Tripoli, is a disused trainyard. The yard was part of an extensive rail network built by the Ottomans in the 19th century and running throughout Lebanon. Lebanon had the first railway in the Middle East, opened in 1895. This network ran along the Lebanese coast from the northern Syrian border all the way to Haifa in Israel, and also extended up through Mount Lebanon. It linked up with the famous Hejaz Railway, which connected Damascus and Medina and was the railway blown up by Lawrence of Arabia.

However since Independence in the 1940s sections of Lebanon’s railway were slowly disconnected or built over. The 1975-1990 civil war saw most remaining infrastructure and trains destroyed. All rail links into Lebanon are now severed. (Amazingly, I’m told there are still over 200 people employed by Lebanon Rail, even though there’s been no train movements in Lebanon since the early 1980s).

Sitting in the Tripoli railyard are a number of old steam engines, which according to Robert Fisk (see here) were originally from the pre-First World War Reichbahn and were transferred from France to Lebanon during the French mandate period.

Sadly, as you can see here, they’re in terrible condition and are rusting away. Thomas the tank engine would not be pleased, and nor would the fat controller!

One very easy daytrip that you can take from Beirut is to the ancient city of Byblos. Located about 35km north of Beirut, Byblos is often described as the oldest continually inhabited city (although Damascus, Aleppo and some others also make the same claim - see here).

Another claim to fame is that writing was invented at Byblos and the name of the bible is attributed to Byblos.

These days, the old city of Byblos is a beautiful little village on the Mediterranean complete with a sheltered port, crusader castle and several quaint restaurants overlooking the water (including the famous - but highly overrated - Pepe’s restaurant). It’s a lovely spot to wander around and enjoy the history.

The famous Casper & Gambini’s chocolate fondue.

Melted dark chocolate, chopped strawberries, kiwifruit, pineapple and banana, plus a few biscuit bits and marshmallows. What a great way to get your daily allowance of fruit and anti-oxidants?

Well, we’ve dipped into our 10kg stash of sausages already.

Dinner tonight was bangers and mash, with onion gravy, dead horse (tomato sauce) and steamed veges. All we needed was some Tip Top bread to make Tasmanian sausages (in-bread sausages). Thank you Fina, that was delicious!

After four months back in Beirut we figured it was about time we got away from it all. So we left the sea-side sunny Mediterranean city of Beirut and headed for the sea-side sunny Mediterranean city of Limassol in Cyprus for a four day long weekend.

Yet while Cyprus is only 20 minutes flight from Lebanon, it has a completely different feel and pace. The roads are excellent, the traffic is sensible, shops sell British products (sausages!!!) and it has a much more European feel - which is just as you’d expect from an EU member - demonstrated by the huge number of British retiree expats, cashed-up Russian tourists and Eastern European guest workers.

We stayed at the Mediterranean Hotel in Limassol, which was really nice and recently renovated. As you can see from the pictures, it has a bunch of nice pools and a stretch of beach frontage. Though I’d have to say that all the photos we’d seen of Cyprus beaches have obviously been doctored. In reality the beaches are pretty ordinary, especially if you’re used to the golden white Australian beaches as we are.

Not that we were swimming in the Med, as it was still way too chilly. The hotel pool was cold enough!

Of course we haven’t seen enough Greek and Roman ruins here in Lebanon, so we did a little bit of exploring around Pafos with Mitchell “Indiana Jones” Fraser leading the way through the Tombs of the Kings.

For the most part we did some shopping (we bought 10kg of English pork sausages and brought them back frozen in an esky - thank you Mediterranean Hotel for the use of your deep freeze), ate out a lot, and lounged by the pool while trying not to marvel at the pasty lumpy Russians and Ukrainians wearing distressingly little in the way of swimwear.

Oh, and Mitchell obviously had a great time. He was so excited about the flights, and about having ready access to a beach and a pool and a grassy kids play area. Perhaps I was a bit unduly harsh in my last post suggesting he’s become a terrible twos monster.

It’s been brewing for a while now I guess, but this past week has finally seen the terrible twos descend on the Fraser household with a vengeance. Our previously mild-mannered little bloodnut has suddenly transformed into a child with a serious machiavellian streak.

We’ve had tantrums in the street (not too many of those thankfully) and lots of deliberate naughtiness designed to get a reaction. Mitchell’s into all the cupboards and running off with personal effects, medicines and anything else he can get that he knows he’s not supposed to have.

Sometimes it’s quite cute. The other day he found a packet of pringles in my bag and wanted us to open them just before dinner time. When we said know he started to chuck a wobbly, so I took them off him and put them in a high cupboard in the kitchen. Instead of having a complete meltdown he stormed off, then returned a minute later dragging his plastic chair and plonked it in front of the cupboard to use as a foot stool. (Fortunately he still couldn’t reach, but we were kind of enamoured of his use of logic).

But on the whole he’s really testing our patience. I suspect Nanna’s going to be counting the days until her return to Australia!

We’re off to Cyprus for four days break tomorrow, so lets just see how a change of scene goes down with him.  Could be interesting!

Mitchell’s daycare teaches in both French and English, and at last we’re starting to see some bilingualism developing in the little guy. Yesterday he said to our French speaking driver, Ellie: “Merci Ellie”.

So last night around the dinner table we asked Mitchell to say some other things in French. Unprompted, he said “merci”, “oui” and “aujourd’hui” (”today” for the non-francophones out there).

C’est trés bien, non?

Of course this builds on the one Arabic word he already knows: “yalla!” (which depending on the tone and forcefulness in which it is expressed can mean “get a move on” or something a whole lot stronger…)

We’ve been doing lots more exploring while Nanna’s here. On Saturday we drove north up into the mountains to visit the Bcharre (pron: BESHARAY) region and to see the famous Lebanese cedars. Then on Monday we headed to the southern city of Tyre (pron: TEER).

Bcharre district

Bcharre is one of a number of towns on a ring road around the gorge-like Qadisha valley - known as the Holy Valley because of the number of monasteries, churches and hermit caves there and the Syriac translation of qadisho as “sacred”. The scenery is really dramatic, with all the townships clinging to the sides of the steep valley and the middle east’s tallest mountain, the snowcapped Cornet El-Saouda, towering overhead.

The Bcharre district is where famed artist and author Khalil Gibran (third bestselling poet after Shakespeare and Lao Tse) was born, and it was a major centre for migration to Australia (everyone there has a family member who lives in Australia).

Tyre

Having done a recce to Tyre several weeks ago, we decided to take Nanna to southern Lebanon to explore the ancient Phoenecian, Greek and Roman ruins of this city which dates back to 3000 BC.

First stop was a drive past the Crusader Castle at Sidon harbour, then a detour when we spotted a toy shop selling kids bikes (Nanna wanted to buy Mitchell a bike, so that he could inflict more damage on our furniture). We then continued south to Tyre, a squeezy drive through the old city and stopped at the ruins of the old Roman port. The beautiful mosaic road runs straight into the sea, where a large section of the town’s sea wall has now vanished under the Mediterranean. You can still go snorkling among Egyptian and Roman columns on the sea bed.

We next took advantage of the beautiful Spring weather to go and sit on the beach. Sheridan did very well walking along the soft sand (with a little support from Alex and Nanna) and Mitchie had a great time digging out sandcastles and throwing spades of sand into our faces. Oh how we laughed!

As the afternoon lengthened we ventured on to a neat little ice cream cafe overlooking the sparkling sea, with the Israeli headland 20km to the south. The proprietor looked at us like we were the most boring people he’d met as we each ordered a two-scoop ice cream. The reason for this quickly became apparent, when a Lebanese couple ordered a giant plate covered with sliced fruit, about 15 different flavours of ice cream, assorted toppings and with wafers and other crap sticking out all over the place. It was completely outrageous. Still, we were fairly content with our piddly little ice creams (until the next morning, when Sheridan and Nanna copped a bit of food poisoning).

Final stop before returning to Beirut was the Al-Bass archaeological site, which contains a Roman cemetery, a triumphal arch, and the largest Roman hippodrome (think chariot racing in Spartacus) ever discovered.